UBER PRICE SURGE

Today it emerged the woman, known only as Alicia, had been sleeping in the club, called California, because she couldn’t find an apartment to rent without an employment contract.

A friend, recalling the last time she spoke to her when the flood victim rang her in a panicked phone call just after 9.30am to tell her she was in danger, said: “I told her to try to get out but she said she couldn’t because there was a lot of water.

“Then I told her to climb onto the bar which is quite high. I only had time to tell her, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll send you the firefighters now.’ Then the line went dead.

“She came and went. Sometimes she was in Italy, sometimes in Greece, lately she was here.

"We’d known her for some time. She was a good person. We are all devastated.”

The friend, speaking to Spanish local Sur, added: “We were talking that morning, before the floods, and she said she was having great difficulties finding a flat because everyone asked her for an employment contract.

“She had been sleeping in the club three or four nights. I gave her the telephone number of an apart-hotel which had rented a room to another woman.

She said she was going to ring them the day she died.”

An electrical worker also lost his life after the van he was travelling in with two colleagues to repair a sub-station fault was carried away by flood water.

Two police helicopters rescued 23 people, including a baby and an 11-year-old boy, trapped on the roofs of their homes. Most of the air rescues occurred near the inland town of Alhaurin de la Torre near Malaga.

Drivers caught in the flash floods, the worst in the area since 1989, had to abandon cars by climbing out of their windows.

Flights into and out of Malaga Airport were delayed as roads to the airport became impassable after a month’s rainfall in just one hour around breakfast time yesterday/on Sunday.

Extraordinary scenes played out in San Fernando near Cadiz west of the Costa del Sol, where the rainfall was heaviest yesterday evening/on Sunday night, showed footballers abandoning a pitch that looked more like a swimming pool.